You Are Dumb, which is not a blog, posts new columns when it can manage to in these troubled Trumpian times. It is also a Twitter feed, @youaredumb, with content in a similar vein but much shorter. For a take on what a blog by me would be like, check out OLDNERD.

The Reprioritizing Of Two Evils

Honestly, today's IDIOTS SAY THE DAMNDEST THINGS left me with a dilemma. In the last week, there have been two different events generating quotes of such mind-boggling venality and stupidity that I could have gone with either one today. I could have gone with the Aurora shootings, or Batshit Bachmann's insane attempt to paint Huma Abedin and Keith Ellison as Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers. And either way, Louie Fucking Gohmert would have been included, which has got to be some kind of world record for dubious achievement.

But I'm going with the Bachmann thing, because quite frankly, it exposes a much darker madness than the latest whackjob with boxes of ammunition he ordered over the Internet. We now officially have a new outer boundary for the lengths people will go for the sake of tribalism. Bachmann's claims against Abedin are pure, unmitigated right-wing paranoid conspiracy wankery. Period. But even the people willing to go on the record as saying Bachmann's wrong and out of line on this - Boehner, McCain, etc. aren't actually going to do anything about it. They're not going to enforce any kind of disciplinary action for her craziness. And others are openly enabling it, even after she went after a fellow Congressman.

""He has a long record of being associated with [the Council on American–Islamic Relations] and with the Muslim Brotherhood." - Bachmann, the representative of shitty white deep-suburbanites, on Keith Ellison, the representative of upstanding semi-urban web columnists with tiny audiences. On Glenn Beck's radio show, no less.

For those of you unfamiliar wingnut xenophobic SAT analogies, CAIR is to terrorism as ACORN is to communism. It's not actually a thing, but if they say it enough times, it becomes a thing, and then it becomes allegedly toxic for their opponents to associate with that group. All, by the way, while wingnut congressman can freely associate with white supremacist organizations without censure, not that I'm bitter or anything.

For the record, Keith Ellison is not a radical Muslim, he is not a terrorist, he is not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and even if he were, and Michele Bachmann ran against him in my district, I'd probably still vote for him, because that bitch is crazy stupid, and I'd STILL be voting for the lesser of two evils.

"Normally you don’t go blast somebody on the floor who is a colleague on the same side of the aisle unless you touch base with them... But we also know that John McCain himself had said back in the early stages of stuff going on in Egypt that he was, in his words, 'unalterably opposed to helping the Muslim Brotherhood.' Well, obviously the unalterable person has been altered, so he is okay with it now. - Louie Gohmert, making a serious bid for Steve King's job, on the Dennis Miller radio show.

First, because I don't get an opportunity to say this nearly often enough, FUCK DENNIS MILLER. He's crawled so far into his right-wing spider-hole, drinking nothing but his own fear piss since 9/11, that he barely registers in the public sphere anymore. But he's still down there, feeding the xenophobic underbelly of America. And on the radio, no less, which means he can't be doing it for the money.

Anyway, back to Louie. First of all, you Texas toadfucker, normal behavior is only appropriate as a response to normal behavior. So, you know. You first. Your fellow party members want Batshit to stop making them look bad in an election year, and that's apparently impossible. Tough shit.

And, you know what? I'm no fan of John McCain. I never believed in the principled "Maverick" image he carefully crafted over the years. But I'm pretty sure he's not in cahoots with even a partially-inflated bogeyman like the Muslim Brotherhood. If you're pissy because people keep accusing you of a McCarthyite witch hunt, maybe the first thing out of your mouth when someone criticizes you should be accusing them of being in league with the enemy.

"There is no such thing as a moderate Muslim. If they are Muslim they have to follow the Quran. That’s their religion and that’s their doctrine... Is she a Muslim? Is she an active Muslim? I rest my case. That’s all she needs to be.” - Arizona Tea Party leader Wes Harris, clearly demonstrating how the Tea Party is a bipartisan, grassroots movement concerned primarily with excessive taxation and isn't racist at all.

Oh, and don't forget the Tea Party's strict adherence to the Constitution, which clearly states that every government official and candidate for high office shall be subjected to a "religious test". You know, something like dunking, or the comfy chair.

The only good thing about what Wes Harris said is that it is the fundamental, fundamentalist basis for Bachmann's claims. CAIR is evil because the I stands for "Islamic". The Muslim Brotherhood is super extra bonus evil because they put "Muslim" right there in their name and don't even try to soften the blow. Muslims, of course, are not Christians, and worse, many of them are brown and have funny names and thus they don't get to work for Hillary Clinton at the State Department, and if you think this is the delusional raving of a paranoid lunatic YOU MUST BE ONE OF THEM TOO.

"I think it’s worth knowing and I think it tells you something about the level of hysteria attacking these five members of Congress… I would ask the question, what is it they’re afraid of learning?" - Newt Gingrich, not talking about Mitt Romney's tax returns.

Here's how fucked up this array of quotes is. Ready?

Newt Gingrich is the subtle one.

Now that you're done with your hour-long visit to Shuddering Fetal Position Land, Newt Gingrich thinks that nobody should be bothered or afraid of asking a question, no matter how counterfactual or insane it might seem, on pain of being seen as being afraid of learning the truth.

So I ask. Did Newt Gingrich spend money from an illegal kidney harvesting ring to have a full-body prosthetic Jerry Sandusky suit made, allowing Newt Gingrich to spend a lot of time in Penn State shower rooms undetected for a decade or more? I, for one, am not afraid of learning anything about this.

I feel compelled once again to remind you that every single one of the people I quoted in this column, plus the two guys with radio shows, have more say in how our government works than you do. The very least we can do for payback is mildly irritate them for a couple of weeks in November before they go back to being rich, powerful shitheads who always get their way.